Gansey Nation

It’s always interesting to consider what might have happened in history if certain people hadn’t lived: science without Newton or Einstein, music without Beethoven or Bob Dylan – and fantasy without JRR Tolkien.

Of course, there was fantasy literature before Tolkien – Conan the Barbarian in America, Jules Verne in France, Homer in Greece, the whimsical English fairy tradition. But the whole “high medieval” fantasy of kings and queens, dark lords and dragons, armies of darkness and elves of light, all really stems from Tolkien. Like composers after Beethoven, every fantasy writer since Tolkien has had to either imitate or reject; he casts a very long shadow, even today.

My problem with a lot of this kind of fantasy is that I’m a democrat. I hate the idea of “rightful kings”, of an aristocracy; I want my fantasy world to have equality of the sexes, universal education and suffrage, proper dentistry (I can’t imagine Aragorn, even if he had the hands of a healer, popping round to perform a tricky tooth extraction after office hours). I want to see Aragorn and Sauron standing for election, maybe seeing off Saruman and Elrond in the primaries, facing Obama in a live televised debate.

Anyway, replace Aragorn with Prince Charles and you see the problem with hereditary monarchies at a stroke. Preferably of an axe. (What’s that you say? We get an extra day’s holiday for the Queen’s jubilee? Why no, madam, I was only kidding. Vive la Reine!)

Slightly slower gansey progress this week as I spent a couple of days in Edinburgh for work; and as you still can’t take knitting needles as carry-on I had to leave the poor thing behind, like an abandoned puppy, nose pressed against the window watching me leave, howling inconsolably (“Down, Red!”).

This meant flying from Wick airport, possibly the cutest airport in Britain. There’s something very pleasing about watching your bag being hauled out of the cargo hold, put on a truck, driven the ten metres to the terminal, and unloaded through a hatch directly into the waiting lounge for you to pick up, even if some of the mystique of air travel is lost in the process.

Here at last is the pattern chart – though it’s scarcely a surprise at this stage. The only change I made from the original pattern was to widen the step slightly, from 10 stitches to 12, and of course to increase the number of pattern repeats to fit my stitch gauge. I’m cabling every 6 rows which makes for a nice, tight cable. The wearer will be lucky if he can bend over once it’s on. Heaven help him if he sneezes.

The Humber Keel gansey finally made it to Des, the intended victim, in Edinburgh – here’s a picture to prove it. I thought he wouldn’t get a chance to wear it till the cold weather in autumn, but luckily we’re having a traditional Scottish spring.

Finally, another triumph for Lynne; here’s her Cape Cod gansey, based on the pattern from Alice Starmore’s book. Note the patterned gusset, a nice touch. Congratulations again!

How windy is it in Caithness just now? Take a small to medium sized family car – something like a Ford Ka, say, or a Renault Clio – position it on level ground, put it in neutral and take the handbrake off. Go round the back and give it a push. As it eases into motion, that’s about how hard it is to force your way against the wind right now. I’m actually getting tired muscles from walking into the wind. Everything is tilted to 45 degrees, people lean at crazy angles like Charlie Chaplin with his boots nailed to the floor. Even my coffee has whitecaps.

Caithness: Don't bother combing your hair

Still, after the glimpse of summer we had last week, suddenly it no longer seems quite so counter-intuitive to be knitting ganseys. I’m past the ribbing, and have increased (from 388 to 432, an increase of 44 stitches or about 10%). The gansey at this stage resembles a muffin – or the sort of creature archaeologists have found fossils of in the Burgess Shale, and I imagine it roaming across the shallow bottom of prehistoric oceans, illuminated by shafts of sunlight, hunting for krill.

As I said last week, the gansey is going to be the same size as the previous Humber Star gansey, i.e., 46 inches in the round. But – I should have said this last time – I’m using Wendy yarn instead of Frangipani, for a change. (I expect it to take between 11 and 12 100 gram balls, but I got 13 just to be on the safe side; when I finally decide to call it a day, the last gansey I knit will be a multi-coloured, migraine-inducing spectacular, using up all the leftover yarn from previous projects.)

Now, Wendy is a slightly fluffier yarn than Frangipani, and my stitch gauge naturally tends to change when I knit with fluffier wool, with fewer stitches to the inch. So the risk is, by keeping to the same number of stitches, I end up with a gansey tent, not a jumper; but if I reduce them, I might make it too small, and end up with more of a corset.

So in the end I decided to stick with the same number as last time, but pick a pattern with lots of cables. The pattern will be “Filey V” from Gladys Thompson’s book – I’ll chart it out for next time, when I start the detail). It’s a simple pattern, but very effective, and the cables should draw it in a bit, while allowing room for expansion in the blocking stage if need be. It’s all a bit “rule of thumb” but it should work out OK.

It’s not getting any less red as it grows, I notice. Maybe I could start a new line in hand-knitted Chinese lanterns?

No blog next week, as we’ll be away over Easter visiting my parents in Northampton, a distance of some 598.1 miles. They don’t have an internet connection, so it’ll be a complete break from the stresses of the modern world (other stresses may, of course, be involved – not least the promise of snow this week, which should make life interesting).

Margaret and I would like to wish all our readers a very happy, wind-free Easter, and we’ll see you again on Monday 16th April.

Well, here we are, the Big Reveal of the finished Humber Keel gansey: washed and blocked, hopefully so that you can see the pattern in all its glory (and even modelled by a homeless derelict we found fighting seagulls for garbage down by the harbour, who was bribed with the promise of a rum-and-oven-cleaner cocktail).

To recap: the bottom ribbing consisted of 388 stitches, increased to 432 for the body. The finished gansey measures 23 inches wide by 26 inches long (though it could easily be stretched wider – and longer – if required). The armhole is a little over 8 inches deep (consisting of 79 stitches), and the sleeve, including rolled-back cuffs, almost 22 inches long.

It’s been fun, something I’ve never tried before. And have I been assiduously planning what to try next? Reader, I have not. Instead I’ve been enjoying a well-earned break, and actually doing some writing again: I’ve finally started a sequel to my Welsh winter fantasy novel, after all these years; my hope is to finish it by Christmas. And by next week I’ll be refreshed and ready to pick up a circular needle in anger again.

Speaking of writers, I’ve been reading up on my Wick history and discovered that Robert Louis Stevenson (Treasure Island, Dr Jekyll, etc.) came to Wick in the 1860s when his father’s engineering company were contracted to build a breakwater in the harbour. Alas, the breakwater was destroyed in a series of unusually severe storms and had to be abandoned in 1873, though part of it remains, jutting out like a natural rock outcrop from the entrance to the south harbour, just past the old lifeboat station down by the cliffs).

South Head Quarry path

The event seems to have soured RLS’s attitude to the town, though he later apologised for and retracted some of his harsher observations. But in a letter home to his mother in 1868 he writes:

“Certainly Wick in itself possesses no beauty: bare, grey shores, grim grey houses, grim grey sea; not even the gleam of red tiles; not even the greenness of a tree. The southerly heights, when I came here, were black with people, fishers waiting on wind and night. Now all the S.Y.S. (Stornoway boats) have beaten out of the bay, and the Wick men stay indoors or wrangle on the quays with dissatisfied fish-curers, knee-high in brine, mud, and herring refuse…

“In Wick I have never heard any one greet his neighbour with the usual ‘Fine day’ or ‘Good morning.’ Both come shaking their heads, and both say, ‘Breezy, breezy!’ And such is the atrocious quality of the climate, that the remark is almost invariably justified by the fact.”

I think his first paragraph is a little harsh (even replacing the dissatisfied fish-curer with an archivist); but honesty compels me to admit the second is bang on the money even now, almost 150 years later… But I can’t complain; it’s perfect for wearing ganseys, after all.